News Release

Second Look at Saddam Verdict: · Timing · History

November 6, 2006

SCOTT HORTON
Horton is chairman of the International Law Committee at the New York City Bar Association and adjunct professor at the Columbia University Law School. He makes frequent trips to Iraq, working as an attorney representing arrested local-hire reporters of U.S. media.

On Oct. 26, Horton was quoted on a news release from the Institute for Public Accuracy (titled “Saddam Verdict and the Election“) noting that the verdict “will be front page news in the papers on Monday — the day before the election.”

Today, Horton pointed out that Iraqis — such as the blogger Riverbend — view the timing of the verdict as being arranged by the U.S. government.

JOYCE BATTLE
A Middle East analyst for the National Security Archive, Battle edited the backgrounder “Shaking Hands with Saddam Hussein: The U.S. Tilts toward Iraq, 1980-1984.”More Information

NORMAN SOLOMON
Executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, Solomon is the author of the book War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. His article today, “Saddam’s Unindicted Co-Conspirator: Donald Rumsfeld,” is posted at Common Dreams.

He wrote: “Saddam Hussein has received a death sentence for crimes he committed more than a year before Donald Rumsfeld shook his hand in Baghdad. … On Dec. 20, 1983, the Washington Post reported that Rumsfeld ‘visited Iraq in what U.S. officials said was an attempt to bolster the already improving U.S. relations with that country.’ …

“As the most senior U.S. official to visit Iraq in six years, Rumsfeld had served as Reagan’s point man for warming relations with Saddam. In 1984, the administration engineered the sale to Baghdad of 45 ostensibly civilian-use Bell 214ST helicopters. Saddam’s military found them quite useful for attacking Kurdish civilians with poison gas in 1988, according to U.S. intelligence sources.”

Video of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein on December 20, 1983 is available here.

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167